1. Field
The disclosed embodiments relate to software library projects. More specifically, the disclosed embodiments relate to techniques for performing analysis and assessment of software library projects.
2. Related Art
Source code of newly developed software projects typically calls or references external application programming interfaces (APIs) of existing software libraries. By making calls to the external APIs, developers of the software project may reuse the functionality provided by the corresponding libraries and avoid reimplementation of the functionality in the software project.
However, external APIs and/or software libraries may be in various states of health, reliability, stability, and/or compatibility with the software project. For example, open source libraries may have varying numbers of contributors, commits, ingoing and outgoing dependencies, versions, and/or issues and bugs. Similarly, different versions of the same library may have different features or components, and as a result, may or may not be compatible with the software project.
As a result, development of the software project may be significantly impacted by the selection of specific libraries for use with the software project. For example, the calling of APIs in libraries that are stable, popular, actively managed, and/or otherwise healthy may simplify the development and implementation of the software project. On the other hand, the calling of APIs in libraries that are unstable, buggy, poorly maintained, and/or otherwise unhealthy may incur overhead associated with adapting the software project to changes in the libraries and/or taking on the responsibility of maintaining the libraries.
Consequently, use of software libraries may be facilitated by mechanisms for assessing the health of the software libraries.
In the figures, like reference numerals refer to the same figure elements.